


Kintsugi

by SouthernRust



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Between Seasons/Series, Canon Compliant, Coping, F/M, Five Kisses Challenge, Five Times, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, Non-Graphic Smut, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 07:11:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17997260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernRust/pseuds/SouthernRust
Summary: We poured ourselves into the cracks & made it new.





	1. Fracture

**one.**

Physics demands that moving objects remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. When he’s not in the thick of everything, it often feels like the sheer force of will alone keeps him going.

The return flight from Greece makes a long and uneventful thirteen hours, but after the riots and discourse that saw him fetching the Economic Officer from a compromised location, doing nothing at all absolutely beats getting punched in the back by an M84. Turns out a bruised kidney and a number of fractured fingers are actually enough to earn a leave of absence.

The diplomat exits the plane first, all smiles and PR-worthy waves for the waiting cameras, and Leon steps gingerly out after him as the first of several protective agents in detail. It burns the question to know how the press would’ve played the narrative differently, were it public information that the rescued man pissed himself after a firebomb detonated close enough to ignite his jacket. But Leon’s lips are sealed: a matter-of-fact promise offered to soothe the hysterics out of a stumbling man coming up at twice Leon’s weight.

“You live to fight the good fight another day, Sir. There’s no shame in that.” Pretty words for the sole benefit of a man who’d only been caught in the crossfire once. Leon holds no truth in them for himself.

It’s not a sizeable envoy of congratulations and well-wishes that greets him off the tarmac’s edge, but she’s more than a welcome sight. He sees her coming: spots the worry lining her brow and the red denim jacket that’s almost faded to pink in its age, and his pace quickens faster than is probably recommended. Rushing into a reunion hug is a pipedream when his back screams the way it does, but Claire shoulders that burden by meeting him more than halfway. She folds herself into his edges, mindful, and Leon groans in relief as she tugs his backpack from a white-knuckled hand.

“You’ve gotten scruffy,” she says. He flashes a smile laced with aching and shoots back the reminder that ladies love the stubble. He’s gotten too old, too rough around the edges, to keep the boyish charm of a baby face. As for a full-on beard? Well. It’s not for lack of trying. “How do you like it?”

Claire’s smile twists, unceremoniously flirtatious. “You’re a dreamboat. Who could possibly resist that jawline? Now give me a proper hug so we can get out of here, and maybe I’ll wax poetic on the drive back.”

It’s an opportunity if he ever got one, and Leon seizes it—hungrily and with both hands. He slides his touch from her wrists and higher: along her bare forearms and up proud shoulders, to both sides of her neck. Claire’s hair trickles between his fingers, splashes over his knuckles. Her pulse ticks just this side of wild, and if he could he’d gather the rhythm in his palms and carry more than just the memory of her back to a cold and empty apartment. She feels real. She feels warm. She feels here, welcoming, open—anything but mindless or hostile, and when he tips her head back to lay his mouth against her brow, Leon closes his eyes.

And he breathes in a lungful of home.


	2. Break

**two.**

Sometimes the force thrust upon an object is violent and sudden and out of anyone’s control, and the only thing left to do is rediscover ground zero, pick up the pieces, and heave it all straight into a fucking fire. 

Ten years to the day of Raccoon City’s destruction, the US government and subsequent do-gooders publicly announce the plans to construct a memorial site outside the quarantine zone. When Claire sends a resentful text about the entire thing sounding like a capitalization on “lessons learned” and “better tomorrows” before the upcoming election, Leon agrees in half as many words: that’s exactly what it is. 

Leon’s position as a government agent guarantees a secure place out of the spotlight, but Claire’s rising influence through TerraSave lands her right under the hottest beam of it. _Tell us about the gravity of it all, Miss Redfield. What was it like, surviving Raccoon?_ “It was…a nightmare,” she says at first, reluctantly agreeing to answer touch-and-go questions between public appearances. “I wouldn’t want to wish the experience on anyone. It doesn’t make a good story.” 

The buzzards disagree. Demands for exclusive interviews swoop in every time she changes location and when one particularly chaotic pursuit resulted in a broken camera, Claire calls him mid-way through an anxiety attack. He’s on a plane within the hour. 

Adam grants him an official order to accompany her to and from every PR function that month. Press conferences called to discuss TerraSave’s latest global and local community cleanup projects derail off topic once Claire Redfield opens the floor. It’s all about Raccoon City and the final hours before the fire. _Did anyone else escape? Did you find any children? Did you have to kill—?_ Claire stops answering questions after that. 

She takes a vacation. Leon’s orders still stand, but they’re nothing more than a letterhead: a favor granted with the knowledge that he wouldn’t have left her side—authorized or not. 

Despite the invitations, they don’t attend the ribbon cutting ceremony. Or agree to promote any of the sensationalized media plugs in the weeks following. Leon would’ve preferred to keep the tv off, but Claire insists they watch it beginning to end. Maybe she thought the anger would be easier to mute with a screen and several hundred miles of distance between.

It doesn’t. She watches the tv, he watches her, and for the first time in a long time he worries that ghosts have finally clawed their way in to make a home.

The program fades out on a sober but hopeful note that carries on as the shot pans into a cloudless sky and one lasting message: _We survive. We remember. We endure._ Remote in hand, Leon sends a picture of the American flag collapsing in on itself, and his chest pangs with the dread that she might end up doing the same. 

Wordlessly, Claire unfolds from the couch and slips into the other room. Her silhouette spills across the floor when the bathroom light flicks on, and as the door closes, the light wanes into a needle-thin sliver. Then even that piece of her is gone.

Five minutes pass. He checks his watch. Ten. Pushing a hand through his hair, Leon stands and paces to the kitchen twice and checks his watch again. He paces. Spins on his heel. He paces right up to the closed bathroom door, lifts a knuckle, and raps gently upon the wood.

“Claire?”

“Leon.” 

He lets himself in. Thick, warm air fills his mouth as he takes in a deep breath and glances about the room. Nothing looks out of the ordinary for a woman taking a bubble bath. He worried, God, but he _worried_ —and that’s something he doesn’t apologize for. Even if he does feel like an idiot. “I thought you were…” 

“Making a break for it out the back window?” Claire smiles without teeth, and she tips her head back onto the water-speckled tile. Her hair, though damp and dark at the ends, sits in a messy knot at the top of her head. One stray piece falls loose along her collarbone. “No. I haven’t done that since I was fifteen.” 

Leon shakes his head and strides farther into the room. He tries again. “I thought you’d—” 

“Drowned in the tub?” Claire hums, thoughtful. When she inhales in preparation for a long, cathartic sigh, the bubbles froth and hiss around her bare shoulders. “Sometimes I think that might be easier. I’m doing what I can to keep my head above…everything.”

Leon nods. He turns, sinks down to press his back up against the cool porcelain, and balances both arms on either knee. A splash and a trickle of wet heat spreads down the back of his shirt before Claire’s fingers curl into his hair. He turns into the touch—and freezes when her mouth brushes against his jaw. 

The idea of Claire floundering as she sinks into a place he can’t reach twists something ugly in his belly. It grabs and twists so hard that his dinner lurches and burns on its way up and curdles at the back of his throat. “You aren’t alone here.” 

“No,” she agrees, moving to settle her chin against his shoulder. “It’s just you, me, and all the demons we forgot to burn.”


	3. Tear

**three.**

Real survival stories don’t nicely wrap up with ribbons and foiled edges trimmed in sunrise gold, and the people in them don’t walk into the horizon so much as into a space free of the darkness where monsters like to hide. 

There’s always something to wear by the end of it: a smile for the picture, a medal for the commendation, a splint or two for the fractured bones. He never remembers how he gets there—only that the smile is always first of those things to go. 

Smiles insinuate there’s something to celebrate; and living when others have died in his place never gave him much cause to pop the champagne. But guilt? Relief? One feels like being drawn and quartered, and the other like the release after waking up from that god-awful fucking dream, only to realize—no, no, it wasn’t ever just a dream. None of it was. 

It feels like being frayed at every seam and that smile is the last thing that needs stitching. At least the remaining pieces aren’t sloughing off so badly that it’ll take a well-placed warhead to fix.

For the first time in ten years, they drive to Raccoon City, and it feels like everything’s come leading up to this return---this inevitability. Only it doesn’t feel like they’re coming home; it feels like they’re walking back into the graveyard they’d crawled out of. If it wasn’t for the chain-link fence and the quarantine wall rising up behind that, maybe the city would’ve opened a hundred thousand pairs of fire-glassed eyes, gnashed a hundred thousand sets of teeth, and finally succeeded in swallowing them both whole. 

He parks his Jeep a few dozen yards from the memorial site. Kills the gas with a sharp turn of his wrist. Beside him, Claire releases a shaky breath. 

In the distance, a rainbow of sun-faded ribbons snaps and waves along the fence. The flowers planted there have already wilted and died in a cracked plot; nothing grows around the edges anymore. 

He wants to blast the whole granite slab from its base and tear it out of existence. He wants to smother this shining fucking beacon of hope—and the government’s greatest theatrical excuse for an apology along with it. He wants to crush each and every fucking one of those ribbons under his shoes and cut his hands on the rusted metal. That’s what the city wanted, right? Blood? Maybe then the ground would drink. Maybe then it’d take its fill and finally leave him—and Claire—alone.

“We’re here.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Do you want to get out?” 

“No.” 

Slender fingers slide across his hand, and it’s only then that he realizes it’s been closed into a fist this entire time. He lets go. Color bleeds back into his knuckles, and feeling too, and then his seams are torn, ripped open. His eyes are burning—he’s blind, all but for the warm splash of red that turns him bodily and rises up to shoulder his brow. 

I’m sorry, he says, I’m sorry. 

Claire thanks him for the apology. She combs her fingers through his hair and presses her lips to his crown, and when she hums a soft, mindless tune, it reverberates behind his ribcage like she’s found all his cracks and poured herself between them. Then he quiets, gradual and sputtering like the last dregs of a heavy storm, and Leon wraps his arms around her. His grip tightens in a hungry, silent squeeze. 

Monsters aren’t the only ones who refuse to let go.


	4. Shatter

**four.**

Two objects can only gravitate closer and closer so many times before collision becomes the inevitable result. Leon counts his lucky stars for a well-recorded history of crashing into things, and for a while he believes it’s _his_ experience in avoiding the pitfalls that keeps their relationship from steering off course.

By the time Claire careens into him, welcome and without warning, Leon quickly realizes she’s been the one at the wheel from the start.

Uninterrupted furloughs are so rare that when opportunity presents itself, it takes everything in his power not to board up the windows, uncork a bottle, and unplug the phone. The only variable stopping him from doing just that is respect to his councilor to get out there, get busy, get lost anywhere else but his own idle headspace. But when Claire visits? When Claire visits, having a quiet, uneventful evening is the best thing he could hope for.

Hope never feels more within reach than when he’s with her, and reach he does—mindlessly and often. When Claire curls up beside him on the couch, Leon frames his palm around the nape of her neck and works his fingers into the tenseness he finds. It bleeds out of her posture like ink across water, quietly bubbles up from her mouth in what he dares to call a sigh of pleasure. 

His mouth quirks up at one corner. “You need a massage.” Before she has a chance to point out the technicality, Leon adds, “A real one. From a professional.” 

She reaches up to pinch his chin between thumb and forefinger, and Claire gives him a little shake. “And you need more than one good night of sleep. You’re starting to get eye bags.” 

“We could just call it a night right now.” 

She hums an insinuating note that twists up in question, and the sound draws his attention like the slide of a fingertip across his jaw. In the cool light spilling out from the tv, Leon fixes his gaze on her expression. Somewhere quiet, nestled between his breath and the allowance of a shrug, he hears himself say, “You make it easier.” 

Claire softens. Her mouth sets into the thoughtful, stubborn line he’s seen a million times before, but then she leans close— _really_ close. Her breath warms his mouth, her lips are soft, and where her palm slides up against his chest, it feels like he’s taken a nosedive off a cliff and made a break for water. Except there is no water at the bottom; she keeps kissing him and he keeps falling, and it’s getting more goddamn difficult by the minute not to drag her over the edge with him.

When she pushes up and mounts his lap, Leon hisses in a breath between clenched teeth. He’s excited and they both can feel it, and fuck, he can’t decide if the worst thing to do right now would be to stop her or let her continue. 

“Claire—” 

“I’m here,” she says. “Aren’t you?” 

He wonders if this is what it feels like, coming alive a second time. His arms wind around her waist, and it’s all he can do not to tangle her hair between his fingers and tighten them into a fist. Claire rolls her weight down into him. Again. A firebomb goes off in his chest. Flames spread, licking up and over his eyes, in his mouth, across his tongue. 

I’m here, she told him. No. She isn’t—she’s not just here. She’s above him, on top of him, in his lungs every time he comes up for air. She’s shaking in his hands and arching against his chest, and her gasp shudders in his ears more than his own pulse. She says his name to warn of the head-on collision, and when he doesn’t get out of the way, Claire shatters—

Everywhere.


	5. Quake

**five.**

Physics demands that objects at rest remain at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced, outside force. Given who they are: one rescuer, one fighter—two survivors trying to do more than just exist again? Leon suspects none of this ever will truly stop. Not until they do. 

He’s never liked the big cities; they serve too great a reminder that there are innocent people waiting to be trapped like rats in a goddamn science experiment—that there are too many variables and too many wild cards for one man to account for twice. But when he’s with Claire? When he’s with Claire, her smile lights up like a clear horizon free of nooks and crannies. 

When he’s with Claire, those skyscrapers look less like rows of jagged teeth and more like the fingers of an outstretched hand. 

She takes him to a cafe that’s got a good view of the cityscape before it wakes up. Claire corrects him on that note, reminds him around a mug of tea that New York never truly sleeps—in fact, it’s almost as restless as he is. 

Restless. A good word for a man who never stops moving long enough to enjoy a coffee on the government’s watch. His phone rings. Right on time.

Claire turns her face toward the window and smiles into the sun, and something about that expression feels like surrender, like acceptance. Leon’s chest pangs. She never did like the finality of goodbye, and so they never say it, content to substitute it with temporary noncommittals. Call me later. Don’t be a stranger.

“Gotta go,” he says. Leon dips his head into the unfolded frame of his sunglasses, chair scraping as he gets to his feet. Claire doesn’t rise to meet him. He doesn’t mind. 

Her mouth is warm where he presses a kiss to the corner of it, and Claire’s exhale quakes at the touch. She won’t cry. He doesn’t either. Tears are for the couch and for the car—you don’t pour them over coffee when it’s there’s already one bitter taste on your tongue.

“Try not to get killed.”

“Ditto.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a gift made for a friend. I know it's sloppy here and there, but 3000 words took me a week to write and I'm just so tired and full of feels and it is what it is. Like, comment, send some love.


End file.
